Homosexuality & Artistic Design

Proust develops or rather adumbrates the theme: The ambiguity of Marcel's early relationship to Baron de Charlus in The Guermantes Way, when Charlus is essentially engaged in an elaborate seduction that is disguised as a hale effort to take a naive Marcel under his wing in society, is stretched through the length of the novel. Only in the opening scene of Cities of the Plain (i.e., Sodom and Gomorrah) does Marcel understand that, in psychological repose, his social mentor is a "man-woman" who has "the features, the expression, the smile thereof," of a woman (Proust, Cities 626 et passim). Further, Marcel witnesses a dumb show of the first flirtation between Charlus and the servant Jupien, a flirtation that is carried forward through the time of The Captive to a full-blown, long-term, rather decadent affair. What then develops is Proust's detailed examination of the rather squalid environment of what Proust persistently, though not exclusively, terms the invert, which we as critics know to have been a principal constituent of Proust's own selfhood. In the first-person narrative, Marcel is consumed by a woman, Albertine, for good and ill, and the novel--though certainly not the entire work--en

. . .
her fantasy or their lot in real-world life, yet the paradox of the unknown agent of liberty is that it is also a trap. Solange and Claire enact a fantasy that neither would engage in if they were not together. But together, as their schemes to interfere with the social reality of Madame fade, they come to a dim awareness that their fantasy lives are a war between social and psychological reality. The resolution of that war is both an affirmation and destruction of self. In The Stranger and The Maids the revolt against reality and the realization of a fully consistent self takes the form of self-destruction. But the alternative seems a self-denying collaboration with pernicious reality. How can this dilemma be resolved without resorting to a literature that sentimentalizes the concept of heroic revolt? Or is existential revolt just another name for Romantic heroism? ONE VERSUS MULTIPLE PROTAGONISTS We have seen earlier in this research that the essayist such as Sartre, Kierkegaard, or Camus no less than the novelist creates an artificial "self" that explores by nonfiction argument what the fiction writer's principal character discovers by insight and incident. Yet the essayist is confined by point of view, while the novelist or
. . .

Some common words found in the essay are:
Proust Cities, Vladimir Estragon, Solange Claire, Self Kierkegaard's, Six Characters, Camus Kierkegaard, VERBAL LEVEL, Kafka's Burrow--or, Proust Regained, Collateral Campaign, remembrance past, remembrance past trans, past trans ck, 3 vols, scott moncrief, trans ck, moncrief terence, terence kilmartin, trans ck scott, vols york, moncrief terence kilmartin, house 1982, ck scott moncrief, york vintage-random, vintage-random house,
Approximate Word count = 7719
Approximate Pages = 31 (250 words per page)